Still seems a sharp practice to me... they (and I suspect others) are gently forcing drivers to use garages they have an association with (before they often said things like 'there could be a delay in processing your claim'), I have a very local body-shop to me which is a two-man operation, restores historic cars and carries out insurance claims, wouldn't this start to squeeze out the smaller businesses? On top of that many new cars now have lengthy manufactures paint and anti-perforation warranties which, to be maintained, I suspect require bodywork to be done by them. I've successfully claimed on my 12 year anti-perferation warrantee right up to a month before it ended I don't think that this would have been the same if I had used a third-party during my ownership.
I guess if I had a no fault claim the £200 could be recovered from the other party, suspect like most insurance issues this has been driven by dodgy claims or over inflated estimates, bit like the windscreen excess which has gone up due to more complex/expensive screen and people smashing an old/tired screen just to get a new one on the cheap.
Don't know why this erks me, but seems a small amount of choice is being taken away.
CGN - sorry I took so long writing my post you've mentioned what I thought.
Last edited by: Rudedog on Sun 23 Jun 19 at 15:59
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